The End of the Blogging Bubble or Reducing the Noise on the Internet?
In yesterday’s isue of the French Swiss newspaper Le Temps there was an article stating that more and more people who have started a blog are frustrated and that blogging might dissolve itself sooner or later. The writer, Luc Debraine, quoted an article from New York Times that tens of millions of bloggers normally just have one reader. For many blogging is a big illusionary bubble, of the hope that their personal expression is creating attention, an interactive exchange, to get publicity. The result is nil: Bloggers are melancholic beings fighting like Don Quichotte against windmills. Many are disappointed and turn again away from blogging. The American web research institute Gartner is estimating a sum of 200 million ex-bloggers.
“There is too much noise, too much gossip and useless images on the internet”, says Bruno Patino, the French president of the site monde.fr. “This arena threatens to us sweep us away. The tendency will be more towards the agora, towards a reorganizing space. For me the main theme for 2007 and 2008: the reduction of noise on the internet.”
An intelligent thought easy to agree, but difficult to realise. Outer silence comes from inner silence, and this is rare nowadays. The web is just a mirror reflecting the trends: Today each individual is trying to establish its identity and therefore trying to be different from others, in the frantic pace of life. Individual initiatives are often just blossoms of a day and not long lasting. The long breath comes through inner depth, by following a path, a search of a red line through life.
Reducing the mental noise is essential on the spiritual path, thus reducing inner and outer gossip. But it is like swimming against a stream, the mainstream. You need a training, and a guidance is helpful. In the booklet On Silence by K. Parvathi Kumar you can find beautiful thoughts on the import of silence.
February 15th, 2007 at 6:16 am
Great post!